


Heart Open

by VmarsSA



Category: 12 Monkeys (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friendship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-17 01:26:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11265093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VmarsSA/pseuds/VmarsSA
Summary: Betrayal can break your heart and shatter your reality. Never let it be said that Cole doesn't learn from his mistakes.





	Heart Open

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first 12 Monkeys fic. I recently discovered this amazing show and I cannot believe it took me this long to find it. 
> 
> If the characterization is off I apologize, I really wanted to write something from Cole's POV. I have a plan for a multi-chapter fic but I have only just started working on it and I wanted to get this out there for now, I have no Beta so all mistakes are my own.

Cole has known heartache before, he remembers watching his father get murdered, the life draining from the man who had loved him with all he had. The emptiness he felt in that dreadful moment has never truly left him. But after the plague, when it was just him and Ramse, he learnt not to get attached, another loss was always just around the corner and if he lived with an open heart the pain would consume him. He remembers them meeting up with a small group of teenagers, they were all just mini scavs, kids who didn't know any better, but they became a pack and travelled together for a while, until one day he and Ramse went out on a supply run and returned to a camp site full of bodies and blood, everything ransacked. Cole had felt the fear and panic start to grip him until Ramse took a hold of both his shoulders and forced him to look at him.

"Cole we gotta move, it's just you and me brother and we need to get out of here." That had broken the spiral he felt himself descending into as he followed Ramse to safety. He always followed Ramse, and from that day onwards he only ever allowed himself to keep a small piece of his heart open for his brother and best friend.

But then he met Cassie, and God help him he tried to shut his heart to her, but he couldn't. She consumed him until he forgot why he was trying to save the world in the first place, the mission became her, his days were spent trying to save her and his nights were spent trying not to dream about her. These were the only two people that James Cole ever let in, the only two people he couldn't help but love, but he knew one day it would kill him.

And so standing in the facility in 2044 with Ramse leading a coup against him and Jones, he felt a small part of his heart shatter. When Ramse so casually told him he wouldn't understand because he never had a family Cole felt his entire existence being yanked from under his feet. He always thought Ramse was his family, he thinks that what family is, brothers who would die for each other. But to hear Ramse dismiss it like it meant nothing hurt like nothing Cole had ever known.

But when he realizes just how far the betrayal extends his heart nearly collapses in on himself. Lying on the ground with a gun pointed at his chest and Cassie on the other end of it, he almost prays she will just end it because he can't fucking deal with the pain that's ripping his chest apart. She's been slowly killing him for months since the day she splintered onto that rooftop with a gun pointed at Jennifer and he's so fucking tired of feeling guilty for who she has become. She's all hard edges and closed emotions and he tried so hard to break through to her, but in that moment he realizes it was all for nothing. Nothing he said had ever truly reached her heart.

And he's mad, God damnit he's mad at her. She made him open his heart, wanted to know him and she made him love her, but now she's standing over him and he's staring down the barrel of a gun. For the first time ever, Cole realizes that he wants to save the world for himself, not Cassie, not so that she will have someplace to go back to, but so that when this is all over and he ceases to exist as he currently is, the pain and heartache will cease to exist too. In that world he won't know the betrayal of a brother and he won't know the heartache of a woman who took him and turned him inside out.

And in that moment Cole feels something inside him shift, he's no longer Ramse's little brother or Cassie's wanna be savior. No, in that moment he becomes who Jennifer told him he could be, a goddamn leader. He will see this thing through, because James Cole may be loyal to a fault but he's no idiot. He will make it to 1957, splintering through time carrying a mountain of heartache with him but he'll do it. And when it's done he'll carry the scars with him as a reminder to never let his heart open again.


End file.
